Ballets By Ludwig Minkus - Minkus's Music

Minkus's Music

The fact that Minkus the composer fell into obscurity has much to do with the way ballet music was created and handled during his time as Ballet Composer in tsarist Russia. There, as in other parts of Europe, the ballet master had full rein over the scores provided him by the composer. Ballets of the 19th century were a marriage of dance and mime. The music provided for ballets had to be above all "dansante", with light, rich, lively melody, and an uncomplicated, regularly phrased rhythmic and orchestral structure, capable of accenting the movements of classical ballet. The music provided for the mime scenes and scenes of action had to set the mood of the drama. Minkus was contracted to compose ballet music on demand. He was obliged to score a new ballet every season, along with the constant revision of the music of already existing works for Petipa's numerous revivals.

Like many of the specialist ballet composers before him, Minkus outlined the majority of his scores during rehearsals whilst the Ballet Master choreographed his dance fantasies, as well as putting to use the detailed instructions that the Ballet Master would provide, often known as composing music "to order" (even Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker were scored "to order", with detailed instructions from Petipa).

It was well known that Minkus maintained a cache of already-composed music in his home, divided into categories such as waltzes, polkas, adages, etc. which he would then select for a new work and orchestrate accordingly. Often Minkus would write four to five melodic passages for a particular variation or pas to be chosen by the choreographer, as well as tailoring the music to fit any changes. Many of Minkus's original scores contain numerous optional repeats of various phrases, anticipating cuts in production. There were instances where Minkus would compose music for a large ensemble dance in sections—an introduction, four or five melodic passages, and an ending—to be assembled by the ballet master depending on how much music was needed. Even more interesting, there were times where the music had to be composed for a pas that had already been choreographed! Minkus was often required to interpolate the music from other composers' ballets into his own works, almost always at the behest of a ballerina wanting to dance her favorite pas or variation from another work. These interpolations often required Minkus to tailor the music of any surrounding numbers for smooth transitions.

Most of the numbers in Minkus's ballets are in either double or triple time (2/4, 4/4, 3/4, 3/8, 6/8, 12/8, etc. are the majority of the time signatures Minkus used, though occasionally he composed dances in 5/4, and even alternating from 4/4 and 3/4, as in the Danse des esclaves from his 1877 score of La Bayadère). 3/4 was the time signature that purveyed over the majority of his scores: Hindu temple maidens, under-water nymphs, Gypsies, Spanish bull-fighters, farm girls, magical fairies, gods and goddesses, princes and princesses, king and queens, whether they were alive or were ghosts, all danced to waltz rhythm.

One of Minkus's most revered strengths was his ability to create a vast variety of melodies (the principal element on which ballet music was judged in the 19th century). The ballet historian Konstantin Skalkovsky tells in his study In the Theatre World of how "Minkus's march from (his 1878 ballet), 'Roxana' was the favorite piece of Tsar Alexander II, who in general did not love music. Several units of the our troops stormed the Plevna to the music of this march." Minkus's other celebrated talent was in composing for solo violin and solo harp, of which most of his compositions have a great deal (Minkus's violin and harp solos were written with the talents of the famous violinist Leopold Auer and harpist Albert Zabel in mind, who both served as lead violinist and harpist in the orchestra of the Imperial Theatres throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries).

Minkus's orchestra was large. One of his scores from Imperial Russia calls for strings, flutes, piccolo, clarinets, cornet, oboes, bassoons, contrabassoon, trombones, bass trombone, English horns, French horns, trumpets, tuba, often 2 concert harps, drums (snare drum and bass drum), timpani, triangle, tambourine, and glockenspiel. Occasionally Minkus found uses for the gong, piano, and castanets. Even with such a large ensemble, passages for full orchestra are rare, with Minkus almost always using the same combination of instruments unless a special mood was required, while only exploiting the brass to thicken the music when needed. The majority of the main melody in all of his compositions is almost always given to the first violin and flute sections, often doubled up with second violins and violas, giving two-part writing (often 2 violinists sharing the same manuscript would take turns playing so that the other could turn the pages!). Minkus was also quite fond of the bass drum, as well as pizzicato for double bass, used mostly for marking time (his original orchestration for the scene The Kingdom of the Shades from his 1877 score for La Bayadère is filled with pizzicato for double bass and bass drum). Such writing is not at all a testament to any lack of imagination on the part of Minkus—he simply wrote this way because it was faster, as he often had very little time to orchestrate after what was needed musically was decided by the ballet master, not to mention that a more complex musical structure would have been rejected by both the ballet master and dancers alike.

In Russia Minkus remains much respected for his abilities with ballet music, though in the west this is mostly a recent occurrence, as many musicians have been known to have little respect for the genre of 19th century ballet music. Many western ballet companies have chosen to perform Minkus's music in various reorchestrations done by a number of musicians, most notably by the composer/conductor John Lanchbery. In recent times more and more ballet companies have been making considerable efforts to go as close to the original sources as possible when staging ballets, and in that process the music of the old specialist ballet composers is beginning to gain respect.

In 2001, the Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet (the former Imperial Ballet) mounted a reconstruction of the Petipa/Minkus La Bayadère, which was staged using the Stepanov Choreographic Notation of Petipa's last revival of the work in 1900, part of the Sergeyev Collection housed in the Harvard University Library. For this reconstruction the Mariinsky Ballet unearthed Minkus's original hand-written score, thought for many years to have been lost. This antiquated score was hailed as a masterpiece of its genre as well as a phenomenal example of a long-vanished era in the history of ballet music.